QUESTION: I’ve just returned from a summer trip with my family. I booked daytime activities for our teenage children so my husband and I would have time together. I envisaged long, lazy afternoons in bed together (something we rarely manage at home at weekends), but he kept suggesting walks and sightseeing trips instead. We only managed one sex session, and when I wanted a repeat, he said: ‘But we had sex yesterday!’ Is there anything I should have done differently

His dream: On holiday, he kept suggesting sightseeing and walks

ANSWER: The problem with holidays is we look forward to them so keenly they can easily become a graveyard of dashed hopes. We pin fond fantasies on our time away: the sun will shine, we’ll find time to read ten novels and quality time with our beloved will effortlessly segue into mind-blowing sex.

Her dream: She hoped for long, lazy afternoons in bed together

I suspect your husband’s plans for the holiday were different from
yours. When your weekdays are defined by the twin burdens of work and
childcare, your fantasies start to revolve round low-stress activities.

While some people feel sex is the ultimate form of relaxation, others believe it simply cranks up the stress factor. Is it possible your husband falls into the latter category If there’s been a bit of a sex drought in your marriage of late (due to teen-tending and your professional lives) your husband could feel under considerable pressure to perform — but that kind of anxiety may further reduce his performance.

It’s also vital to remember some people find time away from home more stressful than their everyday lives. Either way, it’s quite a big ask to go from nought to 90 on the sexual speedometer, just because you’re on your hols.

You envisaged effortless afternoons of bliss, but your husband might have thought seven sessions of intercourse sounded daunting and a lot of effort. If this was the case, several strategies might have helped here. The first was improved communication. You probably needed to warn him, before you went away, that you were longing to catch up on marital intimacy. That would have given him a chance to say he was looking forward to some sightseeing and a rest. You could have worked out a compromise.

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It’s also best not to put all your eggs into one basket. If you had squeezed some sex into the weeks before your trip, you wouldn’t have felt so frustrated on holiday. I know plenty of long-married couples who think one good bout of passion in a week is a respectable tally. As a friend says: ‘It’s when you’ve booked a sexy weekend in Rome and your husband doesn’t jump your bones at all that you need to worry.’

Having said all this, if your husband seems less interested in sex than before, it warrants investigation. Avoiding sex can be a sign of depression, romantic ambivalence or an early indicator of erectile dysfunction.

What’s clear is that it’s certainly not unreasonable to want a little love-time on your holidays. You could trying repeating one friend’s holiday motto: ‘Twice is nice, anything more is lucky or greedy.’